Friday, May 18, 2018

Orwell again

Referencing George Orwell's 1984, Gerald Warner comments on cultural changes in the United Kingdom which mirror similar changes in other Western countries. I agree with the gist of what he is saying but I think it is best said without using the terms 'Marxism' and 'cultural Marxism' in the way that he does – too loosely. As he uses the terms, they are almost semantically empty.

"Political correctness – the euphemism for cultural Marxism – has colonized almost every corner of life in Britain. The social assumptions and public discourse, as well as the legal framework, have become Marxist. Genuine free speech is now an historical memory.

"One can only marvel at the prescient accuracy of George Orwell’s dystopian warnings in “Nineteen Eighty-Four”. Thought crime is today called “hate crime”; Newspeak is the constipated, hideous neologisms of PC language. People have begun to police their own speech; formerly articulate individuals now have a hesitant delivery as they negotiate the pitfalls of an ever-expanding minefield of taboos."

(From his article, "Marx is winning", Reaction, May 15, 2018.)

Monday, May 7, 2018

A Parkinson's playlist

This is an abridged version of an essay of mine which appeared recently at The Electric Agora.



It's well-known that music can play a positive role in dealing with such conditions as Parkinson's disease and depression.

My mother has been struggling with a range of medical problems (including Parkinson's disease, severe depression and dementia) for some time. She has lived in a nursing home for six years now. Her concentration span is limited and she finds speaking increasingly difficult. But music remains important to her. She had some early classical training on the piano but her main passions as a young person – apart from movies – were dancing and pre-rock-and-roll American popular music.

When I visit her, mostly in the evening, there is not a lot of talk, no dancing, and no television (apart from ten or fifteen minutes of news). Music is the main entertainment. I play recordings which I know she likes mixed in with others which I think she might like: a bit of classical piano music (Mozart's sonata K. 331 is a favorite), but mainly popular songs. Certain themes and moods (e.g. love, loyalty, steadfastness, defiance) and certain styles and tempi (simple and slow) tend to resonate.

My mother is a fighter. She has been written off many times by medical professionals over the years but has always managed to rally and come back from the brink. It’s sheer determination that keeps her going. The topic of funeral arrangements came up recently. I told her not to think about it; my brother and I would deal with any arrangements. Then she said she wanted me to arrange things (as she put it) “so that I don’t die.” I said I would do my best.

Not surprisingly the Puccini aria “Nessun dorma”, which ends with that marvellously defiant “vincerò” (“I will prevail”), works for her – the Mario Lanza version, at any rate.

We know we won’t prevail in the end. Though battles are won, we are fated to lose the war. We live as if this were not the case; as if victory were possible. But love and loyalty exist, and this fact stands between us and dark despair.

Generally I choose less emotionally extreme pieces than “Nessun dorma” – popular love songs, the sort of music you could dance to, ballroom-style, certain forms of jazz.

George and Ira Gershwin's “Love is Here to Stay”, as sung by Gene Kelly, is simple, straightforward and reassuring.

Results can be unexpected. Happy songs – especially if they are known and remembered – don’t always have the desired effect. "On the Sunny Side of the Street", a song my mother used to sing, once brought on a crying episode.

By contrast, “My Funny Valentine” (early Frank Sinatra version) always gets a good response. Another old Sinatra song which she responds well to is “Nancy (with the laughing face)."

Another favorite is (the long version of) “These Foolish Things”, as performed by Jane Birkin and Jimmy Rowles. Philip Larkin, the English writer and jazz-lover, thought the song a bit too self-consciously poetic, but he liked it nonetheless (at least as performed by Billie Holiday). Part of what gives the song its strength for me is that it involves real memories of a real love affair.

The lyricist was Eric Maschwitz, an Englishman who became involved with the Chinese-American film actress, Anna May Wong. Some of the memories sound like romantic clichés, but many are believably specific: a cigarette with traces of lipstick; airline tickets to romantic places; a tinkling piano in the next apartment; a telephone left ringing; first daffodils; long excited cables [telegrams were charged by the word and could be quite expensive]; the sigh of midnight trains in empty stations; gardenia perfume lingering on a pillow; silk stockings; wild strawberries (“only seven francs a kilo”); Greta Garbo’s smile; a waiter whistling as the last bar closes; the scent of smouldering leaves; the wail of steamers...

Not being a musician, and being very language-oriented, I tend to see the lyrics as primary. The music is the setting. It enhances the words (or not, as the case may be).

I can’t say exactly how my mother perceives these songs, but I know that the cultural world in which she grew up – dominated by Hollywood and British movies and the popular songs of the time constitute a significant part of – and color much of the rest of – her memory base. The sense of outrage and loss she felt as a teenager when her mother found and disposed of a box of cuttings and photographs from movie magazines (like Film Fun) which she had hidden in her room stayed with her for years.

Once when she was in hospital a few years ago during a bout of pneumonia and very close to death, she said that she had been visited by Eddie Cantor. We thought she was hallucinating – until we encountered a young psychiatrist who had been assigned to her. He had very thick rimless glasses which made his eyes look prominent.

Even now memories of movies and actors and singers and dancers from that period are still active for her – singers like Frank Sinatra and Dinah Shore, for example. She had a crush on Tyrone Power, and had a special interest in French actors working in Hollywood: Annabella (who was married to Tyrone Power), Simone Simon, Michèle Morgan and – her two favorite Frenchmen – Charles Boyer and Jean Gabin.

French songs or singers were generally not so familiar to her. But Blossom Dearie's version of “Plus je t'embrasse” typifies the ideal kind of song for my Parkinson’s playlist. It’s light and bright and jazzy. This kind of music – like the music of Mozart – conveys a reassuring sense of equanimity and provides a bulwark of sorts against the waves of depression and anxiety that are commonly associated with the condition.

Perhaps my mother’s favorite song is “Someone to Watch Over Me” by George and Ira Gershwin. Blossom Dearie’s interpretation is perfect, and certainly more convincing than the Frank Sinatra version which my mother remembers. Somehow it’s a bit of a stretch to see Sinatra, even in his young and skinny days, as "a little lamb who's lost in the wood."

Tuesday, May 1, 2018

Sex, gender and contemporary progressivism

Daniel Kaufman recently made some cogent points about the paradoxes and contradictions at the heart of today's gender identity politics. I won't try to sum up his view or even articulate my own in a rigorous way. In fact, my views are not settled, and I am just noting down here a few preliminary, disconnected thoughts which Dan's essay has prompted.

The way that identity politics has developed is unfortunate in a number of respects, and the contradictions and apparent absurdities play into the perception on the part of many that something has gone badly wrong here. These ideas have adversely affected the standing of institutions where they have taken root: universities, sections of the media, government bureaucracies, etc.. More broadly, they could be seen (as Dan notes) as more evidence of the breakdown of the liberal consensus (I am using the word "liberal" in its old-fashioned sense here) upon which secular, Western forms of democracy have historically depended.

My first response to most gender identity talk is to dismiss it as self-indulgent and silly. And I think a powerful case can be made that most of it is.

Dan is right that there are conflicts and contradictions within and between various kinds of contemporary progressivism and feminism. He sees this as a problem for progressives (like himself) because, clearly, it undermines their credibility and so weakens their cause.

But I am tempted to the view that the current absurdities are not so much aberrations as a natural development of what were, from the beginning, basically flawed ideas. I am thinking particularly of the notion (dominant in the 1960s and 70s) that the brain is like a blank slate upon which social and cultural experience writes.* This idea is simply wrong as many capacities and behavioural tendencies are innate. This is not to say that all boys like to play with trucks and all girls with dolls; there is huge individual variation. But general tendencies are to a significant extent built in. Sure, they develop and are often reinforced in a social context. And attempts can be and often are made to counter them.

Some such attempts I would endorse, in fact. My point is not about the desirability of particular behaviours but rather about the roots of such behaviours.

Just look what happens when you let baby chimpanzees loose in a playroom: the males go for the trucks and hammers, the females for the dolls. Or rats in a maze: the males have a better sense of the wider environment, the females of the proximate environment. The evidence for innate differences is overwhelming, and it is clearly only an ideological commitment to certain social ideals which – as far as I can see – can explain the persistence of (variations of) the blank slate view. Obviously, to the extent that certain tendencies are deemed to be innate, there are limitations on what social engineering can achieve, so there will be a natural resistance to these ideas on the part of those hoping for or seeking to implement radical social change.

Dan quoted from a recording which his parents gave him as a child and which was designed to express in simple terms some of the doctrines of the secular liberalism and progressivism of the time (early 1970s). He links to the title song of the collection which, he says, still elicits a positive emotional reaction. I think I understand this. But I interpret it in slightly different terms.

As I see it, such childhood influences – and all of us have them in one form or another – run very deep and continue to affect our values and how we think. Crucially, they operate largely beneath the radar of consciousness and so tend to make certain views seem self-evident and others anathema. (Parental views are not reliably passed on, of course: there are many other inputs and factors – including rivalry with siblings, and alliances and rivalries with friends and contemporaries – to take into account.)

This may be a simplistic view – it is certainly speculative – but I can't help seeing left-wing or secular progressive politics as playing a similar role to that traditionally played by religion, as being a kind of religion-substitute. Some of my radical cousins, for example, identify themselves largely in terms of their political position, and it seems to operate in a similar way to my early experiences of religious identity, both within the bounds of the nuclear family and beyond. Even naming practices are involved. My cousin Lizzie has a daughter whom she called Rosa (after Rosa Luxemburg).

I suggested above that the conflicts and contradictions which Dan Kaufman highlights in contemporary identity politics may derive in part from internal contradictions in basic liberal progressive doctrines. But, applying this politics-as-religion idea, one could also see the current disputes as paralleling the universal tendency of religious denominations to fragment into warring factions.


* I'm not sure what Dan's views are on this idea, but there are oblique references to it in his essay, and a direct (and approving) reference in a linked and recommended article.